About once a month, all dragonkind will come together and celebrate one of the eleven elements for an entire week. But if you've never participated in a festival before, or just want a refresher, here's a guide to help you get the most of the experience!
(Skip straight to Items or Skins and Accents.)
Every month except December has a festival during the last week of the month, celebrating one of our Flights. The festivals are scheduled as follows:
January: Crystalline Gala (Ice)
February: Trickmurk Circus (Shadow)
March: Mistral Jamboree (Wind)
April: Wavecrest Saturnalia (Water)
May: Greenskeeper Gathering (Nature)
June: Brightshine Jubilee (Light)
July: Thundercrack Carnivale (Lightning)
August: Flameforger's Festival (Fire)
September: Starfall Celebration (Arcane)
October: Riot of Rot (Plague)
November: Rockbreaker's Ceremony (Earth)
December has a special, rare event - the Night of the Nocturne. Click here for info about it!
Festivals start on rollover on the Sunday morning of the last week of the month, bright and early. (Note: It may or may not be the last full week of the month versus the last Sunday of the month. Riot of Rot in 2013 started on October 27th (last Sunday of the month), but Starfall Celebration in 2013 started on September 22nd (last full week of the month).) It will end on Saturday night, at rollover.
But what is there to do during a festival?
Skin and Accent Contest
The first thing you can participate in is the skin and accent contest. Sometime during the first week of the month, one of the admins will put up a post in the Skins and Accents forum, asking for submissions to the festival skin and accent contest. They'll also make an announcement on the main page, and the contest will be mentioned in the little rotating banner in the very top right of every page on the site.
You can design a skin or accent based on the theme of the festival, using the PSDs available on the website. The admins will choose the best of these skins, and during the festival, all but two will be available from the treasure marketplace for 35,000 treasure and half of those will also be in chests that drop from the coliseum from monsters that are either neutral or of the festival element. There's also a rare chance to obtain one of the chests from digging in the appropriate festival element during your daily gathering turns. (The other types of gathering do not have a chance of giving a chest.) Two of the skins/accents will only be available from Baldwin's Bubbling Brew. The recipe changes each festival.
Accents for the festival can be slightly different from the usual accent rules. They must cover at least 5% of the dragon's body, and they can cover up to 50%. (Normal accents can cover between 1%-30%.)
The marketplace will not have all the marketplace skins and accents available at all times. The marketplace restocks a few random sections every 5 minutes (at x:00 and x:05) with random items, and wipes out all their stock every two hours (the even hours according to the site time.) So if you can't find a skin or accent you want, check back every 5 minutes. Generally it's easy to get the skins you want later in the week, if you can't snag them early on.
The skins in chests drop from neutral monsters or monsters of the festival element in the coliseum. To see where you can find monsters of certain elements, take a look at this guide. So for the Starfall Celebration, you would be looking for areas with a lot of Arcane and neutral monsters. Chests contain the skin or accent, 2500 treasure, and 1 gem. (Chests previous to the 2014 Shadow festival contain between 1000-3000 treasure, 1-3 gems, and the skin.)
Note that each neutral monster will drop one possible chest, while a monster of the festival element will drop two possible chests. (Source) So if you can't get the chest you want, you might want to try a different area of the Coliseum. For which chest drops in which area, see this guide. Higher level areas have a better chance of dropping the skin and accent chests. (Source) The best place to farm will likely be the areas you can kill monsters in one hit, though.
The winners get a prize, too! The current prize is a copy of their winning skin, 1,000 gems, and a 5-skin multi-copy-pack. There are usually honorable mentions, as well, who win a smaller prize, but their skins are not part of the festival.
The skins and accents become available as soon as the winners are announced, usually at the start of the festival.
Festival Currency
Each festival, there is a unique currency specific to that festival. For instance, for the Arcane Starfall Celebration, you have Magical Shards. These are only useful during the Arcane festival in September – they can't be used during the Riot of Rot in October, which has its own currency (All-Seeing Shrooms). You can save them up and use them the next year, however!
You can get this currency in three ways. First, you have the chance to get some if you gather in the festival element using your daily gathering turns. So again, if it's the Starfall Celebration, if you do any of the six gathering options in the Arcane location, you have a chance of getting Magical Shards.
The second way is to fight in the Coliseum. All neutral monsters and monsters of the festival element have a chance of dropping the festival currency. To see where you can find monsters of certain elements, again, take a look at this guide.
Higher level areas have a better chance of dropping the tokens and skin/accent chests. (Source) Festival element monsters have around a 25-45% chance to drop festival currency (depending on area), while neutral monsters have around a 15-35% chance (again, depending on area), according to nika's guide here. It's almost always better to farm some place that you can kill in one shot, however, even if that's a lower level area.
Third, you can craft them at Baldwin's Bubbling Brew. If you've never used Baldwin's Brew before, see this guide. You need the following components to create the festival tokens:
Baldwin's Bubbling Brew Recipes
1 Festival Token
Level: 1
Components: 1 Green Goo
Time: 35 minutes
XP: 20
2 Festival Tokens
Level: 1
Components: 1 Green Ooze, 1 Green Sludge
Time: 40 minutes
XP: 25
5 Festival Tokens
Level: 2
Components: 1 Yellow Goo, 1 Yellow Ooze, 1 Yellow Sludge
Time: 1 hour
XP: 48
20 Festival Tokens
Level: 3
Components: 1 Grey Slime, 1 Copper Muck
Time: 2 hours, 50 minutes
XP: 130
You can also buy these items from other players, either from the Auction House under 'Other' or through the forums.
Festive Favors
But what do you do with this new currency? You go shopping at the Festive Favors stand and trade for some unique items!
Currently, each festival has four unique items at the Festive Favors stand.
The emblem apparel will return each year when the festival comes around again, but the two other objects, and the familiar, will be new each year.
All items released before June 2016 will never return, with the exception of the emblem, the bear familiars from June 2014-May 2015 (available again every year during the Night of the Nocturne event), and the Crowns from June 2015-May 2016 (currently unknown where they will be available).
As of June 2016, all festival items, including skins, accents, familiars, apparel, and vistas will be available in Joxar's Spare Inventory boxes.
Every year will have a theme for the familiar and one of the other available items (typically a smaller piece of apparel). The current theme (June 2017-May 2018) for familiars is Spirits, and the theme for secondary item is Deity Forum Vistas. The primary apparel piece is larger and more directly connected to the festival theme.
Secondary Piece Theme:
June 2013-May 2014: Armband (25 Tokens each)
June 2014-May 2015: Sash (35 Tokens each)
June 2015-May 2016: Crown (40 Tokens each)
June 2016-May 2017: Forum Vistas, Flight-themed (50 Tokens each)
June 2017-May 2018: Forum Vistas, Deity-themed (50 Tokens each)
Familiar Theme:
June 2013-May 2014: Sprites
June 2014-May 2015: Bears
June 2015-May 2016: Elemental Acolytes
June 2016-May 2017: Goblins
June 2017-May 2018: Spirits
Joxar's Spare Inventory
Also at the Festive Favors Stand are Joxar's Spare Inventory boxes!
Each holiday, you can purchase one Joxar's Spare Inventory box for 80,000 treasure.
Inside the box are 2 or 3 items:
1 color variant or past holiday item (guaranteed)
1 Prismatic Token (guaranteed)
1 chance at a past holiday skin from the 2016-2017 season (bonus chance, not in every chest!)
The possible past holiday items in the box are the 2015-2016 elemental crowns, the 2016-2017 large apparel pieces, the 2016-2017 vistas, and the 2016-2017 goblin familiars!
The Prismatic Token - one of which will be in every crate - can be used in Joxar's Spare Inventory to pick and choose color variant items. Currently, there are 11 recolored Sprite Familiars and 6 recolored Apparel pieces!
Recolored Sprites
(Blight Nymph, Boulder Nymph, Bubble Nymph, Cinder Nymph, Cloud Nymph, Electric Nymph, Flower Nymph, Ichor Nymph, Magic Nymph, Snowflake Nymph, Sparkle Nymph)
Recolored Apparel
You can also create Prismatic Tokens at Baldwin's Bubbling Brew, if you're at least level 16 in alchemy! Only available during the festival, it takes four days to craft this item, so be prepared to wait.
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It's also possible to buy, sell, or trade Spare Inventory Crates and Prismatic Tokens (as well as the items found inside, of course!). So check the Auction House or the Items for Sale forum if you're looking for extras!
And that's it for the official festival! Often the Flight whose festival it is does something special, but that's up to the Flight itself – but it can be a lot of fun to plan something out.
Below are all the items that have shown up in the festivals so far.
(Skip straight to Items or Skins and Accents.)
Every month except December has a festival during the last week of the month, celebrating one of our Flights. The festivals are scheduled as follows:
January: Crystalline Gala (Ice) February: Trickmurk Circus (Shadow) March: Mistral Jamboree (Wind) April: Wavecrest Saturnalia (Water) May: Greenskeeper Gathering (Nature) June: Brightshine Jubilee (Light) July: Thundercrack Carnivale (Lightning) August: Flameforger's Festival (Fire) September: Starfall Celebration (Arcane) October: Riot of Rot (Plague) November: Rockbreaker's Ceremony (Earth) December has a special, rare event - the Night of the Nocturne. Click here for info about it!
Festivals start on rollover on the Sunday morning of the last week of the month, bright and early. (Note: It may or may not be the last full week of the month versus the last Sunday of the month. Riot of Rot in 2013 started on October 27th (last Sunday of the month), but Starfall Celebration in 2013 started on September 22nd (last full week of the month).) It will end on Saturday night, at rollover.
But what is there to do during a festival?
Skin and Accent Contest
The first thing you can participate in is the skin and accent contest. Sometime during the first week of the month, one of the admins will put up a post in the Skins and Accents forum, asking for submissions to the festival skin and accent contest. They'll also make an announcement on the main page, and the contest will be mentioned in the little rotating banner in the very top right of every page on the site.
You can design a skin or accent based on the theme of the festival, using the PSDs available on the website. The admins will choose the best of these skins, and during the festival, all but two will be available from the treasure marketplace for 35,000 treasure and half of those will also be in chests that drop from the coliseum from monsters that are either neutral or of the festival element. There's also a rare chance to obtain one of the chests from digging in the appropriate festival element during your daily gathering turns. (The other types of gathering do not have a chance of giving a chest.) Two of the skins/accents will only be available from Baldwin's Bubbling Brew. The recipe changes each festival.
Accents for the festival can be slightly different from the usual accent rules. They must cover at least 5% of the dragon's body, and they can cover up to 50%. (Normal accents can cover between 1%-30%.)
The marketplace will not have all the marketplace skins and accents available at all times. The marketplace restocks a few random sections every 5 minutes (at x:00 and x:05) with random items, and wipes out all their stock every two hours (the even hours according to the site time.) So if you can't find a skin or accent you want, check back every 5 minutes. Generally it's easy to get the skins you want later in the week, if you can't snag them early on.
The skins in chests drop from neutral monsters or monsters of the festival element in the coliseum. To see where you can find monsters of certain elements, take a look at this guide. So for the Starfall Celebration, you would be looking for areas with a lot of Arcane and neutral monsters. Chests contain the skin or accent, 2500 treasure, and 1 gem. (Chests previous to the 2014 Shadow festival contain between 1000-3000 treasure, 1-3 gems, and the skin.)
Note that each neutral monster will drop one possible chest, while a monster of the festival element will drop two possible chests. (Source) So if you can't get the chest you want, you might want to try a different area of the Coliseum. For which chest drops in which area, see this guide. Higher level areas have a better chance of dropping the skin and accent chests. (Source) The best place to farm will likely be the areas you can kill monsters in one hit, though.
The winners get a prize, too! The current prize is a copy of their winning skin, 1,000 gems, and a 5-skin multi-copy-pack. There are usually honorable mentions, as well, who win a smaller prize, but their skins are not part of the festival.
The skins and accents become available as soon as the winners are announced, usually at the start of the festival.
Festival Currency
Each festival, there is a unique currency specific to that festival. For instance, for the Arcane Starfall Celebration, you have Magical Shards. These are only useful during the Arcane festival in September – they can't be used during the Riot of Rot in October, which has its own currency (All-Seeing Shrooms). You can save them up and use them the next year, however!
You can get this currency in three ways. First, you have the chance to get some if you gather in the festival element using your daily gathering turns. So again, if it's the Starfall Celebration, if you do any of the six gathering options in the Arcane location, you have a chance of getting Magical Shards.
The second way is to fight in the Coliseum. All neutral monsters and monsters of the festival element have a chance of dropping the festival currency. To see where you can find monsters of certain elements, again, take a look at this guide.
Higher level areas have a better chance of dropping the tokens and skin/accent chests. (Source) Festival element monsters have around a 25-45% chance to drop festival currency (depending on area), while neutral monsters have around a 15-35% chance (again, depending on area), according to nika's guide here. It's almost always better to farm some place that you can kill in one shot, however, even if that's a lower level area.
Third, you can craft them at Baldwin's Bubbling Brew. If you've never used Baldwin's Brew before, see this guide. You need the following components to create the festival tokens:
Baldwin's Bubbling Brew Recipes
1 Festival Token
Level: 1
Components: 1 Green Goo
Time: 35 minutes
XP: 20
2 Festival Tokens
Level: 1
Components: 1 Green Ooze, 1 Green Sludge
Time: 40 minutes
XP: 25
5 Festival Tokens
Level: 2
Components: 1 Yellow Goo, 1 Yellow Ooze, 1 Yellow Sludge
Time: 1 hour
XP: 48
20 Festival Tokens
Level: 3
Components: 1 Grey Slime, 1 Copper Muck
Time: 2 hours, 50 minutes
XP: 130
You can also buy these items from other players, either from the Auction House under 'Other' or through the forums.
Festive Favors
But what do you do with this new currency? You go shopping at the Festive Favors stand and trade for some unique items!
Currently, each festival has four unique items at the Festive Favors stand.
- 40 Tokens - An emblem apparel, which shows the elemental symbol of the festival on the dragon's head
- 65 Tokens - One large piece of festival apparel
- 50 Tokens - One Forum Vista
- 35 Tokens - A familiar
The emblem apparel will return each year when the festival comes around again, but the two other objects, and the familiar, will be new each year.
All items released before June 2016 will never return, with the exception of the emblem, the bear familiars from June 2014-May 2015 (available again every year during the Night of the Nocturne event), and the Crowns from June 2015-May 2016 (currently unknown where they will be available).
As of June 2016, all festival items, including skins, accents, familiars, apparel, and vistas will be available in Joxar's Spare Inventory boxes.
Every year will have a theme for the familiar and one of the other available items (typically a smaller piece of apparel). The current theme (June 2017-May 2018) for familiars is Spirits, and the theme for secondary item is Deity Forum Vistas. The primary apparel piece is larger and more directly connected to the festival theme.
Secondary Piece Theme:
June 2013-May 2014: Armband (25 Tokens each)
June 2014-May 2015: Sash (35 Tokens each)
June 2015-May 2016: Crown (40 Tokens each)
June 2016-May 2017: Forum Vistas, Flight-themed (50 Tokens each)
June 2017-May 2018: Forum Vistas, Deity-themed (50 Tokens each)
Familiar Theme:
June 2013-May 2014: Sprites
June 2014-May 2015: Bears
June 2015-May 2016: Elemental Acolytes
June 2016-May 2017: Goblins
June 2017-May 2018: Spirits
Joxar's Spare Inventory
Also at the Festive Favors Stand are Joxar's Spare Inventory boxes!
Each holiday, you can purchase one Joxar's Spare Inventory box for 80,000 treasure.
Inside the box are 2 or 3 items:
1 color variant or past holiday item (guaranteed)
1 Prismatic Token (guaranteed)
1 chance at a past holiday skin from the 2016-2017 season (bonus chance, not in every chest!)
The possible past holiday items in the box are the 2015-2016 elemental crowns, the 2016-2017 large apparel pieces, the 2016-2017 vistas, and the 2016-2017 goblin familiars!
The Prismatic Token - one of which will be in every crate - can be used in Joxar's Spare Inventory to pick and choose color variant items. Currently, there are 11 recolored Sprite Familiars and 6 recolored Apparel pieces!
Recolored Sprites
(Blight Nymph, Boulder Nymph, Bubble Nymph, Cinder Nymph, Cloud Nymph, Electric Nymph, Flower Nymph, Ichor Nymph, Magic Nymph, Snowflake Nymph, Sparkle Nymph)
Recolored Apparel
You can also create Prismatic Tokens at Baldwin's Bubbling Brew, if you're at least level 16 in alchemy! Only available during the festival, it takes four days to craft this item, so be prepared to wait.
=
x5It's also possible to buy, sell, or trade Spare Inventory Crates and Prismatic Tokens (as well as the items found inside, of course!). So check the Auction House or the Items for Sale forum if you're looking for extras!
And that's it for the official festival! Often the Flight whose festival it is does something special, but that's up to the Flight itself – but it can be a lot of fun to plan something out.
Below are all the items that have shown up in the festivals so far.
